


Things Fall Together

by TheGreatCatsby



Series: If You Take Things Apart [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Language, Possible Spoilers, Warning: Loki, coulson is alive because the shield show is a thing now, probably not ethical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-03-14
Packaged: 2017-12-05 06:07:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/719750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGreatCatsby/pseuds/TheGreatCatsby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki wants something from Tony. Tony tries to find out what it is, and whether it'll result in a repeat of the New York invasion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things Fall Together

**Author's Note:**

> Finally a second part! Hopefully there aren't too many mistakes, and I hope that you enjoy it!

Tony had approximately three hours in the lab running scans on Loki’s dagger before his teammates arrived at the tower, bringing with them an irate Nick Fury and a less irate Phil Coulson for debriefing. Not that their arrival mattered—Tony stared at the readings on the computer screen, willing the information to burn into his mind. 

“Sir,” JARVIS intoned, “your teammates and SHIELD are here and request your presence in the meeting room on the top floor.” 

“I’m busy,” Tony said. 

“Agent Coulson insists.” 

“I’m busy.” A new set of data came in. A magnetic scan of the dagger. Tony pursed his lips. 

“Nick Fury insists.” 

“He would, wouldn’t he?” Tony sighed and stood up, stretching. “JARVIS, on a scale of one to nuclear explosion, how do you think they’ll react if I tell them about Loki?” 

“I would advise telling the truth, sir.” 

Tony scoffed at the ceiling. “You’re no fun.” 

“You did not program me for fun, sir.” 

Tony sighed and walked out of the lab, deciding that a quick let’s-get-this-over-with approach was better than locking himself in his lab and pretending that he was under siege for a week (or one day—Natasha was really good at infiltration.) Within five minutes he was walking into a meeting room full of tired, familiar, worried, and one angry face staring back at him. The entire team was assembled, save for Thor. The doors swung shut behind him and Tony spread his arms wide and smiled.

It belatedly occurred to him that he hadn’t even showered. Or changed. 

“You look like shit,” Clint said. 

“You don’t look so hot yourself.” Tony sauntered over to the head of the table and took a seat, which happened to face directly across from Nick Fury. Tony didn’t look in that direction, instead focusing on Coulson. Not that Coulson was much better; his strange calm in times of trouble could be unnerving. Coulson could also kill him in five seconds even though he looked like a school principal for an elementary school. 

“Are you okay?” Steve broke in, all concern and good intention. “We found the facility—it was destroyed. What happened?” 

“Funny story,” Tony started, only to be interrupted by Fury who snapped, “I doubt it. Get to the point, Stark.” 

“Fine.” Tony took a deep breath. “So I don’t know what happened during the Doombot fight because I was knocked out and when I woke up I was with Hydra.” 

“We beat Doom, if you couldn’t tell,” Clint said. “He isn’t the ruler of the free world, at any rate. But how did Hydra explode?” 

“The better question is, how didn’t you find me for so long?” And that got them silent, though to everyone’s credit, no one looked away. 

“We assumed that you were taken by Doom,” Coulson spoke up. “When it became clear that Doom did not have you, we had to look for others who would take Doom’s attack as a distraction in which to take you. We had to do a lot of searching and eventually we came upon Hydra, whom we thought had been eliminated during the last world war. By the time we got to you, you had escaped.” 

Tony nodded, leaning back in his chair. “Alright, alright, that’s good.” And it was. It was better than his team leaving him for dead, and for a moment he felt guilty that the thought had even entered his mind, but he brushed the guilt aside. 

“So how did you escape?” Natasha asked, leaning forward and staring at him. 

“Well, funny story—“ 

“Stark,” Fury growled. 

“Hydra had some plans, you see, and I was only half of it.” 

“Who was the other half?” Bruce spoke up for the first time. He looked like he’d been deep in thought, almost as if he’d been trying to figure out where Tony had got to without being told. 

Tony allowed the tension to build up in the silence that followed before dropping his metaphorical atom bomb. “Loki.” 

Predictably, there were some reactions, none of them pleased. Clint banged his hand on the table and yelled, “What the fuck? That motherfucker is supposed to be fucking in prison! Where the fuck is Thor?” 

(Which was true, Thor was absent, but this was a common occurrence seeing as he was from another planet. The commute was horrendous.) 

There were gasps from the others, a small sigh from Coulson, and Fury barked, “Explain.” 

“He was there and they did stuff to him, I don’t know what but it hurt him,” Tony explained, “and Loki said they wanted to fuse magic and human technology like Doom was doing, but with Tesseract weapons, and were trying to use Loki’s magic and eventually Loki killed everyone in the building and teleported me to the tower and, um, left me here. Which sounds kind of improbable and I’m kind of wondering why he didn’t kill me too, but maybe it was solidarity or something.” 

“Or maybe he needs you,” Natasha said. Tony hated her sometimes. He’d been wanting to keep that part a secret. 

“He definitely didn’t do it out of the goodness of his heart,” Clint added. “He doesn’t have one.” 

“A heart?” 

“Stop it,” Fury cut in. “We have a situation. We have a mad Norse god on the loose who apparently has a plan and we have no idea what is going to happen. And Hydra’s in operation again. You two,” he gestured to Clint and Natasha, “go to the Hydra base and find out what you can.” 

Clint and Natasha nodded and stood up. Fury turned his gaze on Tony next. “I need you to stay in the tower and if Loki shows up again, I need you to keep him talking until we can arrive.” 

“I’m the bate,” Tony said. “Not sure I like it.” 

“You have no choice,” Coulson said. 

And once Coulson had spoken, there was really nothing Tony could do. For all the money Tony had, Coulson had authority. Which apparently meant something. In this case, that Tony had to stay in the tower. 

He didn’t say anything about the dagger. He didn’t say anything about what Loki had planned. He didn’t know why he didn’t say these things, but part of him didn’t want to be thrown out a window or killed so he figured he’d might as well keep Loki’s secrets. 

That’s what he told himself. 

 

The interesting thing about Loki’s dagger was that it was a magic dagger. 

Tony expected as much, which said a lot about his life. Four years ago Tony wouldn’t have expected a magical anything, but now a unicorn could appear in his lobby and he wouldn’t even bat an eye, he’d just take it to the lab and start analyzing it and perhaps be a little worried about where it came from and whether it would be friendly with horses. Perhaps he would even experiment with unicorn-horse hybrids, just because. 

The knife being magic wasn’t a revelation, but Tony could make several inferences about its purpose. Through testing and various scans and samples and other forms of science that Tony was too impatient to explain to people who asked what he was doing in the lab, like Pepper and Steve and on one occasion Bruce (who would have understood but this was Tony’s secret project) he deduced that the knife was meant to poison as well as cauterize the wound as it went in. He assumed that this was just an asshole move on Loki’s part, in that the knife would lull the victim into believing their cut wasn’t that bad when it didn’t bleed out, only to have them die of poison later. 

Fitting. 

That wasn’t the important part. The important part, Tony realized, was that after he found out what the magic on the dagger was for, he started wondering how the fuck Loki got the magic to be part of the dagger in the first place. Tony couldn’t separate it. Yet the magic hadn’t been created with the dagger…or had it? 

A week later, Clint and Natasha reported that a few tesseract weapon schematics were missing from Hydra’s former base and that other Hydra bases had cropped up around Europe. Tony ignored this. Mostly because when he received the report, at three in the morning on a Tuesday, he’d just started wondering about whether the dagger was a magic dagger or a dagger with added magic. And there was a huge difference. 

And then a voice behind him said, “You mortals are exceptionally slow on the uptake.” 

Tony whipped around to find Loki standing behind him, close enough that he took a step back and bumped into his desk and then jumped and nearly knocked the dagger on the floor. “Mother fucking fuck what are you doing here?” 

Loki grinned. There was nothing happy about it. It made Tony want to jump out a window. “I was testing you, Stark.” 

“Oh. Right.” Tony inwardly cursed. He’d known, but he’d also hoped that Loki would kind of disappear. The universe wasn’t kind. “Did I pass?” 

“Yes.” Loki stepped closer. “Would you like to know your reward?” 

Loki stood nearly a head taller than Tony, so that Tony had to tilt his head up to look into Loki’s eyes, which were a strange blue-green color that seemed the opposite of the color that someone evil would have. (Tony pictured pitch black eyes. Even though none of the evil people he knew had those.) Loki seemed unnaturally pale, and tired from this close. He looked thinner. He’d been busy. 

It took awhile for Tony to form an answer, struggling to not think about how close Loki was and how he was kind of pressed into a corner and JARVIS hadn’t said anything which meant that Loki was probably controlling the building, or at least blocking certain vital processes that usually allowed for Tony’s protection. Finally, Tony said, “I’m not really sure. Last time you killed like one hundred people.” 

“Would you rather I had not?” Loki asked. “We would still be imprisoned. Perhaps they would have started to torture you.” 

“What do you do when you’re not here being all evil dictator, anyway?” Tony asked. 

“None of your concern,” Loki snapped, stepping away. “It was foolish to think that a mortal could—“ 

“Now hold on, don’t start with that mortal stuff. You know I’m smart. Hell, I am probably smarter than half the people you call gods that you know.” He paused, taking in Loki’s annoyed expression. “You need help.” Another pause. “My help.” 

“Perhaps not,” Loki said, “but if you want to pretend you are more important as you are, be my guest.” 

“Admit it.” 

Loki crossed the space between them in the time it took Tony to blink, which was unfortunate, because it gave him no time to escape from Loki’s hands encircling his neck and a dagger to his throat. Tony realized that it was the magic dagger (or the dagger with magic), the one that could poison. Not that it mattered. A dagger to the throat would kill him either way. The universe was just special like that. 

“Stark, I am not asking,” Loki said. “Do not pretend that you have control over something you cannot possibly hope to understand. I am telling you that you will make something for me.” 

“Why?” Tony croaked. 

Loki let go of him and the dagger vanished. “I wish to use the weapons.” 

“I’m not gonna arm you against Asgard and Thor, you know,” Tony said. “I’m not stupid, and you’re not my friend. You’re not even on my team. You threw me out a window.” 

“And I saved you from imprisonment and torture,” Loki reminded him, “or are we so quick to forget? You owe me a debt and I’ve come to collect.” 

“That isn’t how it works!” Tony cried. “I don’t remember promising you a debt. Can’t you just do stuff like that because you’re a good person?”

Loki’s expression darkened considerably. “You would be a fool to think I am capable of being a good person. To trust me as such would be suicide.” 

“Call me suicidal,” Tony said, “but sometimes I like to see the best in people.” 

Loki raised an eyebrow. “Either you are more of an idiot than I imagined—“

“Nah, I totally thought you were gonna ask for something,” Tony said with a laugh. “Just, weapon building, really? Couldn’t you go to Doom for that? He knows how to fuse weapons with magic. I bet he’d know how to make tesseract guns and all that.” 

“But Doom lacks what you have,” Loki said. “He lacks the tesseract. He lacks access to my former weapon that housed a certain powerful gem. And he lacks access to SHIELD.” 

“I don’t have the tesseract,” Tony said, frowning. He’d remember if he did. He got drunk sometimes but he wasn’t in the habit of misplacing really powerful artifacts. 

“You have a similar power source,” Loki said, eyes settling on Tony’s chest, where the arc reactor glowed softly through the fabric of Tony’s shirt. 

Tony suddenly felt naked, stripped bare. He wanted to cover the reactor with his hand but knew such a thing would be useless, and would only give Loki more incentive to fuck with him. 

“This isn’t the same thing,” Tony said, “I need it.” 

And he hated to admit it, but to pretend it was nothing would cost him dearly. Loki would see through the lies. 

Loki made a humming noise and said, “But that is not the only arc reactor you possess—“

“Hold on,” Tony said, “you’re from another planet, how do you know what it is?” 

“Barton told me,” Loki said, and it was the first time he’d mentioned Clint’s time under mind control. Tony never thought about it, but now he wondered exactly what else Loki had gotten out of Clint. 

“Son of a bitch.” 

“One way of putting it.” Loki stepped forward, eyes still on the reactor. He looked hungry in a way that had nothing to do with food. “Now, Stark, your life is in my hands. You will assist me, or I will take the arc reactor from your chest and leave you here to die.” 

Tony swallowed. No good options. He couldn’t work with Loki, nor could he just give up the arc reactor. Easy way or hard way, no in-betweens. No middle way where they both won. Loki stepped closer, raised his hand, and Tony felt a buzzing begin in his head—

“FOR SHIELD!” 

An arrow whizzed past Tony’s ear and slammed into Loki’s shoulder, propelling him back. Tony whipped his head around to see Clint release another arrow, which hit Loki’s chest. He was stringing a third arrow before Tony could even ask, “How?” 

“JARVIS,” Natasha said, slipping through the door behind Clint. “Alerted us to Loki’s presence.” 

The third arrow hit Loki in the other shoulder, but it was smaller. Loki cried out in pain and rage, but slumped against the floor, looking like an elaborate pincushion. Tony stared. 

“And he didn’t tell me about this?” he asked, appalled. “I thought I was gonna die!” 

“If JARVIS had told you, Loki would’ve run,” Natasha said, moving past him with a pair of handcuffs. “Luckily he didn’t, so we can take him to SHIELD.” 

“SHIELD can’t hold him,” Tony said. He needed to sit down. He sat on the floor. “They tried last time.” 

“Well we got some of the anti-magic tech plans from Hydra,” Natasha said, cuffing Loki and pulling the arrows out. Blood began to flow from Loki’s wounds, staining his black and green garments dark. “SHIELD put them to use, figuring that the bate plan would work, which it did.” 

“We got him,” Clint said over his earpiece. To Natasha he added, “SHIELD will be here momentarily.” 

“Wait, wait,” Tony stood up again. “He—in my—you can’t just leave him! He wanted my reactor!” 

“Don’t worry,” said Natasha as she started to drag Loki’s body like a sack of potatoes out of the lab, “you’ll get visiting hours after the interrogation. The facility’s in the city.” She and Clint left. 

Tony stared after them. “We have a facility in the city?” 

From above, JARVIS answered, “It would appear so, sir.” 

Tony scrubbed a hand over his face. 

He needed a drink. 

 

Tony ended up sleeping for two days after The Loki Incident. Part of that was the shock of Loki coming to him and asking for assistance. The other part was the copious amounts of alcohol downed in the spirit of not trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. 

Loki asking for help, and Clint shooting him down without Tony knowing that his security system was actually working was definitely more surprising than a unicorn. 

And infinitely more stressful. 

Two days later Tony found himself in the formerly super-secret SHIELD base below New York City, not too far away from Stark Tower in a part of the city that was Undisclosed. More specifically, Tony found himself in a room akin to a visiting room in a prison, except the agents wore suits and the prisoner was still in his Asgardian clothing and the prisoner was also an alien. 

The first thing Tony said, after staring at said alien for a good amount of time, was, “You drugged him.” 

“Very good, Stark,” Fury said. He didn’t sound sincere at all. 

Loki sat across from him, handcuffed and looking dead tired. Bandages peaked through the bits of his clothing that had been ruined, parts still stained dark. His eyes were glasses and it seemed like it took some effort to focus on Tony’s face, which was interesting, because Loki was nothing if not focused. He could focus on someone like they were a specimen under a microscope. It was a bit like being stared at by Natasha, except Natasha wouldn’t throw you out a window. Maybe. (Natasha was also in the room watching him but not in a microscopic sort of way.) 

Tony wasn’t sure what to say. 

“We figured you could get him to talk,” Coulson said, after a moment. “After all, he came to you. We listened to the recordings of your conversation with him. But we don’t know why.” 

Tony turned back to Loki and asked, “Why?” 

Loki didn’t glare so much as attempt to glare and come across looking like he was squinting instead. SHIELD had the good drugs. Tony would have laughed if all the agents in the room weren’t ready to kill him, or something. Fury certainly would. This was a Formal Interrogation. 

Tony’s question wasn’t exactly the stuff of the CIA but still. 

“Even were I not imprisoned,” Loki said, with some effort, words a bit slurred and quiet, “do you really think I would tell you my plans?” 

“Um…yes?” 

Loki made a soft noise, a laugh without the effort. 

“Look,” Tony said, “if I were to build you weapons I’d need to cater them to what they’d be used against, because that’s when weapons work best. I used to make weapons for a living, I would know. Hell, my suit adapts to each new enemy that I come across, that’s why there are so many. You probably didn’t need to know that, and now you do. Point is, I do need to know if you want my help.”

“I’m not going to get it,” Loki said, voice still strangely soft. “Your keepers would not let you.” 

“They aren’t my keepers!” Tony said, uncomfortably aware of the agents with their guns and Fury’s eyes on him. 

Loki’s lips twitched in what might have been a smile. 

“Fuck you,” Tony said. It wasn’t professional, but he wasn’t a SHIELD agent, and Loki deserved to have someone say that to him every five minutes if possible, anyway. 

“If you insist.” 

“Enough,” Natasha cut in, stepping forward. Until now she seemed to have been content to let Tony do as he would, but apparently he wasn’t doing a good job at the whole interrogation thing. “Loki, tell us what you want.” 

“I want the arc reactor,” Loki said. Then he laughed again. “Your face is precious.” 

Tony stole a sidelong look at Natasha—her eyebrows were raised in surprise and quite a bit of annoyance. She laughed, echoing Loki’s laughter and said, “You must think we’re stupid.” 

Loki blinked. “It goes without saying.” 

“We’re not going to give you access to the arc reactor so you can, what? Kill us all?” She folded her arms across her chest and stared at him like a parent waiting for a child to admit a lie. 

“That wasn’t the initial plan, no,” Loki murmured. 

“What are the weapons for?” Tony asked. 

“This has proved to me one thing,” Loki said, louder, carefully enunciating every word, which really only had the effect of making him sound even more drugged, not that he appeared to notice. “SHIELD would not trust me with such weapons no matter what I used them for, even if I promised to not use them on you, and they would certainly never allow you to help me in building such weapons.” 

They all stared at him. It wasn’t the most mind-blowing thing Loki had ever said, but it was true, and they all knew it. There was no trusting the God of Lies. Tony wondered why they’d even bothered to interrogate him in the first place. 

“The way I see it,” Loki continued, swaying in his chair a little, “is that you only have one option.” 

“Call Thor and get him to take you back to Asgard,” Tony said. 

“That would be it, yes,” Loki said. 

“We’ve been attempting to contact Thor,” Coulson told them. “He isn’t on Earth at the moment.” 

“Of course not,” Loki said, tilting his head to look at the ceiling. Tony looked up, too, but nothing was there. “But that’s fine. Thor already knows.” 

“What do you mean?” Natasha asked. 

Loki grinned at the ceiling, which was disturbing because a) who does that? and b) Loki grinning was never a good sign, in Tony’s brief but informative experience with him. “He sees all,” was the answer. 

This was followed by a few seconds of silence and the agents staring at each other, unsure of what to make of this revelation. The only thing they all knew, though no one wanted to admit it, was that this whole capturing Loki thing was turning out to be a spectacular failure. 

Tony ordinarily would have thought it funny, because sometimes he thought SHIELD agents spent too much time up their own asses, but this time his life was kind of at risk, so he decided to not think about how funny it was until later. 

“So we wait,” Coulson said. He didn’t sound like he thought waiting with a creature who thought himself a god and had destroyed half of Manhattan was a bad thing. But it was. 

Loki suddenly unfolded himself from the chair, standing, swaying a bit, but that didn’t matter because he stood at over six feet and cut an impressive figure in the room. Natasha had her gun pointed at him before he could draw breath to speak, as did the other agents in the room. Tony belatedly realized he would be caught in the cross-fire, probably, and stepped back towards Natasha. 

None of this, however, stopped Loki from talking. Tony figured that nothing ever did. 

Loki simply smiled and said, “I am not content to wait for Thor to drag me back to Asgard.” 

Tony wasn’t sure where they would go from here. Loki couldn’t teleport, but he could kill all of the agents (and himself) with a knife, or something equally gruesome. Tony didn’t have his suit and wasn’t much use. He was a meatbag that bled far too easily. 

But he could talk. 

And so could Loki. 

“How did you escape, anyway?” he asked. 

Loki grinned and did a weird sort of flick of the wrists. Something changed. Tony didn’t know what, until Loki crossed the room in two steps and raised a knife to Tony’s neck, while his other hand held Tony’s arm in a vice-like grip. 

And nobody shot him. 

Nobody yelled. 

Nobody did anything. 

And all Tony could think was, fuck you Loki and your goddamn magic. 

Not that it made any difference. 

Loki smirked at him, infuriatingly, and said, “So, your decision.” 

“It isn’t really a decision if you’re threatening me with a knife, now, is it?” 

“It is,” Loki said. “It is not my fault if the decision you make ends poorly for you.” 

Well, that was one argument. Tony felt the cold knife against his neck and asked, “What did you do to them?” 

“I froze them,” Loki said, “paralyzed them. They can see us and hear us but they can do nothing about it. You’re quite alone, I’m afraid.” He was still grinning. 

Tony did notice, with some satisfaction, that Loki’s eyes were still glassy, and he still swayed slightly, though Tony’s body was now making a rather fantastic support. So that hadn’t been an act. Tony wondered if he could off-balance Loki, but he had no plan for what to do after that. Likely Loki would kill everyone in the room and then him, and then Tony would feel like an asshole. 

Except he’d be dead, so he wouldn’t feel like anything. 

But if there was an afterlife, he was sure he’d feel like an asshole for eternity. 

Instead he stared back at Loki. “What are the weapons for?” 

“Asgard,” Loki said. 

Something about that didn’t sit right. “Liar.”

“Am I?” Loki allowed the knife to prick Tony’s skin, just a little. It still freaked Tony out and he didn’t dare move. “Asgard has the tesseract, the ultimate source of power in this universe. I want it.” 

“The arc reactor is a replacement,” Tony said. 

Loki laughed. “Is that what you think, mortal? That such a thing could replace the powerful of the tesseract? It is powerful, but not powerful enough to destroy the universe. Few things are, but the tesseract is one of them and I need it.” 

“So.” Tony took a deep breath, his brain working hard to figure out how to best play his cards. “You want an arc reactor weapon, or weapons, so that you can break into Asgard and get the tesseract, and then you’ll make tesseract weapons like the ones Hydra made, with which you will…” 

“What do you think, Stark?” 

“Well, one would assume you would attack Asgard,” Tony said, “but that’s not it, is it? You wanted the arc reactor weapons to get the tesseract but you don’t want to take over. You’re looking for something else.” 

Loki’s eyes narrowed. “Is that so? Did you know, Stark, that I was once Asgard’s king?” 

“Who did you kill?” Tony regretted this instantly, as the knife flicked Tony’s cheek, leaving a stinging gash. Blood started to trickle, but Tony couldn’t reach up to wipe it away; the knife had already moved back down to his neck. 

“No one,” Loki hissed. “I was the rightful king. Thor was banished, my father ill. My mother ceded the throne to me, and I was betrayed by those who could not bear to bow down to a monster.” 

“Your words,” Tony said, “not mine.” 

Loki tightened his grip on Tony’s arm. “I knew you would come at the call of these pathetic humans,” he murmured, leaning close. “I am giving time. One week. Be grateful that it is not less.” He let go and stepped back. 

“One week to decide?” 

“One week to create an arc reactor weapon,” Loki corrected, and then he vanished. 

Several clicks filled the room, along with a few yells, and then one, “Son of a bitch!” Tony turned from the spot Loki had been standing to see several stunned and furious SHIELD agents staring back at him. Natasha threw her gun on the floor, where it landed in a puddle of water. 

It took a moment to process. Loki had filled all of their guns with water. 

“So,” Tony said to the assembled, “what now?” 

 

In the end, they decided that the best thing for Tony to do would be to, in Fury’s words, “Just build the goddamn thing and get him off this planet.” 

Which was exactly what Tony did. 

He spent a week in his lab, which wasn’t abnormal, and the other Avengers came to visit him. One time he asked Clint if he should try and rig the weapon to kill Loki, or malfunction, or something but Clint just laughed. 

“From our point of view, Thor and all the other people up there just allowed him to escape,” he said, “so, you know, if he threatens us and Thor’s not around to help then we have no choice.” 

“You should be an ethics professor or something, that was deep shit,” Tony said, welding some steel together.

“Fuck you,” Clint snapped. He picked up a stray bullet and examined it. “You think Thor knows?” 

“He has to, doesn’t he?” 

“Does he?” 

Tony sighed. “Loki said Thor would know because SHIELD had been asking for him, even if he wasn’t on Earth.” 

“Loki is also a liar, in case you forgot,” Clint pointed out. “For all we know he turned Thor into a cheesecake and ate him.” 

“Loki’s not a cannibal.” Tony stopped welding and pushed his goggles up to examine his work. 

“Is it cannibalism if Loki’s adopted?” Clint asked. 

Tony turned to stare at him. “Yes.” 

Clint rolled his eyes and left. 

It wasn’t until later that Tony remembered being told that Loki was a different species. Somehow, he though Loki eating Thor would still qualify as cannibalism, even if Thor were a cheesecake. 

Somehow, he didn’t think this was Loki’s master plan. 

 

Loki showed up at the end of the week while Tony was having a slice of pizza and whiskey, a reward for a job well done. 

Even if said job might destroy the universe, but he didn’t really think about it too hard. 

At least he wasn’t bleeding out on SHIELD’s floor. 

Loki appeared sitting on the desk in front of him, smirking. “I assume you’ve delivered on your side of the bargain.” 

“I don’t remember a bargain,” Tony said. “What was your side again?” 

“Not killing you.” Oh. That. 

“And how did you escape?” Tony asked. “You just up and vanished even though I’m pretty sure SHIELD’s barriers to teleportation actually worked. They worked on the Doombots.” 

“Doom is an idiot,” Loki said. “They didn’t work on me.” 

“Oh.” Tony drained the last of his glass of whiskey. He wasn’t sober enough for this, but he didn’t care. Trying to figure out Loki was like trying to solve an incredibly complicated calculus problem while banging your head into a concrete wall repeatedly. While drunk. 

“The weapon, Stark.” Loki stood up. 

Tony stood up, too, and was grateful he didn’t fall over because the whiskey was making him a little dizzy. “Somebody’s impatient.” 

“There are pressing matters to attend to,” Loki said. 

“Yeah, I know, killing Thor and Asgard and all that. Hard work.” Tony walked over to the table upon which the weapon lay. It looked rather like Loki’s old spear, was modeled after it, in fact, with a small arc reactor glowing in the center of the blade. Tony figured the blade was a nice touch. Loki would like it. 

He handed the spear over and Loki took it in his hands, examining it. Then he smiled. “My thanks, Stark, for your services.” 

“Any time,” Tony said, rolling his eyes. “Now, are you gonna actually tell me what that thing is—motherfucker.” Loki had disappeared halfway through his sentence. 

Somehow, Tony had expected something less…anticlimactic. At least involving one explosion and several knives and an irate Clint Barton and, if they were lucky, the Hulk. But that whole process had gone deceptively smoothly. 

“JARVIS,” Tony said, “please tell Fury and the team that Operation Arm Insanity-God was a success.” 

“Yes, sir,” JARVIS said. 

Tony sighed and fell back into his chair. “And now we wait.” 

 

Tony wanted—no, he expected—to hear something about Loki within the next few days, if only because arming Loki with an extremely powerful and dangerous weapon seemed like the sort of thing that would result in noticeable chaos. 

But everything was quiet. 

For weeks. 

Thor didn’t even show up, and Tony didn’t know whether to be insulted that he’d ignored SHIELD’s messages or concerned that he didn’t get them and was now dead. He decided to be insulted because Thor ignoring him was infinitely better than Thor being dead. 

He didn’t even know if Thor could die, being a god and all, but he probably could. He certainly didn’t want to find out, no matter how interesting a science experiment it would make. 

SHIELD was on edge. The other teammates were on edge, too, if the number of walls Clint had shot arrows at was anything to go by. Natasha went off on some secret spy mission that was guaranteed to be distracted. Steve used up 5% more punching bags than normal, and Bruce had taken up meditation. 

Fury didn’t even bother talking to Tony and Coulson was nowhere to be seen. Which was fine. Tony didn’t do well with SHIELD agents. 

Pepper, who had been on a business trip in Switzerland for a few weeks, had come back to the tense atmosphere in Stark Tower and had asked what was wrong. When Tony told her she looked concerned but said, “If nothing comes of it then don’t worry.” 

“That’s the part that’s worrying me,” Tony said. “Something should’ve happened!” 

“Maybe it doesn’t have to do with you,” Pepper suggested. 

Tony rolled his eyes. There was no way this wouldn’t come back to bite him in the ass. 

But a month went by, and all was quiet, and then Thor turned up in the middle of New Mexico. They knew this because satellites picked him up, and SHIELD gave him a call, but he disappeared for a few hours with Jane (which prompted a lot of jokes from Tony and Clint) before deciding to talk with SHIELD via videoconference. 

The Avengers had gathered for the three-way call in the conference room, where Tony turned on the camera so they could all see each other. Thor looked no worse for wear (though he did have what Tony liked to call sex hair, but that was different and he decided that from the look on Fury’s face, he shouldn’t mention it.) When he spoke, he sounded like his usual happy self. 

“My friends, I am sorry I have kept you waiting for so long,” he said, “but truly, I was not aware that you have been trying to reach me for some time. I only knew yesterday.” 

“Wait, what?” This from Natasha. “Loki said you’d know.” 

“I should have,” Thor admitted, looking uncomfortable, “and had I known he was causing you trouble I would have come immediately.” 

“Didn’t you know he escaped?” Tony asked. 

“Yes,” Thor said, “but we knew not where to. We didn’t think he would go back to his last place of defeat.” 

“Well, he did,” Tony said. There was an awkward silence. 

Fury broke it by asking, “So what happened to Loki then?” 

“He came to Asgard,” Thor said, “and stole the tesseract, and we tried to stop him. We chased him through the realms until he lost us, and we could no longer find him. We returned, defeated, and set about making plans for Loki’s capture, and for possible war. It was only recently that we found out that he had been here, with you, and had threatened your lives.” 

“Yeah, he threatened them alright,” Tony said. “How did you find out?” 

“Loki had used a most peculiar weapon,” Thor explained. “It was like his spear that he used when battling with us the first time he came, but the power source was different. He left it in his haste to flee, and after much examination we found the materials the spear was made of to be from Midgard.” 

“Yeah, that would be me,” Tony said. “He kind of gave me a make-this-or-die ultimatum.” 

Thor nodded, as though this made everything clear. “We are still searching for him, and I hope we can find him before he causes too much damage.” 

“That would be nice,” Clint muttered, shaking his head. 

“So you head back now?” Natasha asked. 

“Yes,” Thor said, “there are some matters I would like to take care of back home, but first I wished to talk to you and see Jane.” 

“Of course you did,” Clint said, winking. Natasha elbowed him. 

“I’m sure you are safe,” Thor added, but he still looked worried. 

“I hope you’re right,” Fury said. 

For the sake of his life and probably his sanity, Tony hoped Thor was right, too. 

 

After the meeting, it took two days, twenty three hours, and fifteen minutes for things to come back and bite Tony in the ass. 

He was in bed for once, reading e-mails on his Starkpad and Pepper had suggested he catch up with (suggested, in this case, meaning threatened.) He heard a thud and didn’t think much of it until he heard a second thud, and realized that this was more than just his tower settling, or some bullshit explanation like that which realisitically wouldn’t happen because his tower was perfect. 

He looked up and saw Loki, sprawled on the floor and struggling to get up again. Tony stared. Loki wore his armor, without the helmet, but it was ripped in certain places, scratched, dented, and otherwise looking used and misused in various ways. Loki didn’t look much better; he managed only to raise himself to his knees (and how ironic, Loki kneeling to Tony, of all people) and his face was too pale, there were bruises on his cheeks and he looked exhausted beyond all measure. 

“You look like death warmed up,” Tony commented once Loki had settled into his position and didn’t make any moves to get up again. 

Loki watched him, expression carefully blank, though he looked like he was grimacing. At least he wasn’t angry. And he had no weapons, and that was something. 

“So,” Tony said, as the silence stretched on, “what are you doing here?” 

“You’ve been wondering, have you not, what would happen,” Loki said, voice hoarse. He swallowed. “I can tell. It killed you not to know.” 

“So what?” Tony straightened, allowing the last vestiges of relaxation to fall away from him. The hand farthest away from Loki reached beneath his pillow and fumbled for a bracelet, which he snapped on. He didn’t want to need it, but he wasn’t an idiot. “Gonna kill me now?” 

“I merely would like to ask another favor,” Loki said. He sounded as if the words were forcing themselves out and Tony didn’t blame him. 

“Fuck,” Tony murmured, looking at Loki’s face. He couldn’t see a lie there. Or an intent to murder. “You’re serious.” 

“I would ask,” Loki said, “for a place to rest, for one night. And,” he licked his lips, “for a drink.” 

“Water?” Tony asked, already rising from the bed. 

Loki laughed, softly. “Something a bit stronger.” 

Tony felt less guilty about being the kind of person who kept scotch (among other things) in his room, because it made this whole situation ten times more convenient. He poured two glasses, one for Loki and one for himself because he wasn’t about to sit here and watch Loki drink by himself. He handed one of the glasses to Loki, who downed it in one go. Tony decided not to do that, given who he was with. 

“What did you do?” he asked instead. 

“I needed to eliminate a threat,” Loki said, “and exact revenge.” 

“And did you succeed?” Tony asked. 

Loki bared his teeth in something too feral to be called a grin, but which had all the marks of savage satisfaction. “Yes.” 

Tony shivered. But Thor was alive, and Asgard apparently was intact and no one knew where Loki was, and the Earth still existed, so clearly they’d all dodged a major bullet. But someone hadn’t. “Should I know who?” 

“Stark, you amuse me.” Loki put the glass down on Tony’s bedside table and grabbed a pillow off the bed. He placed it on the ground before gingerly lowering himself into a lying down position. 

Tony fleetingly thought about offering him the bed but this was drowned out by much stronger feelings of not-gonna-happen. “Well,” he said, “goodnight I guess.”

“Sleep well,” Loki murmured, closing his eyes, and damn, he made that sound ten times creepier than it needed to. 

Tony didn’t anticipate sleeping, but he turned off the lights anyway and typed a message on his Starkpad to JARVIS that read, “If he tries to kill me, alert the others. And try not to let him kill me.” 

JARVIS wrote back, “Yes, sir.” Which wasn’t as encouraging as it should have been. 

Somehow, he still managed to fall asleep. 

And when he woke up, Loki was gone. And it was nearly afternoon. And JARVIS’ good morning message was, “Sir, I didn’t want to wake you, but your guest has taken his leave. You have not been harmed, nor has anyone else in the tower.” 

“Thanks,” Tony said, running a hand through his hair. “Why didn’t I get the team to kick his ass last night?” 

“The logic of your choices eludes even me at times, sir,” JARVIS said. He almost sounded apologetic. 

“That makes me feel better,” Tony said, climbing out of bed. The pillow was still on the floor. Along with a single black feather. Tony bent down and picked it up, turning it over in his hands. “Weird fucker,” he muttered. 

But he didn’t stop thinking about it.


End file.
